


Dust

by lukewarm_wind



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Cecil Palmer's Fashion Sense, M/M, Night Vale is a space colony, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29905263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lukewarm_wind/pseuds/lukewarm_wind
Summary: Night Vale was a tiny colony that rested on the edges of the known universe. The planet it was on was barely hospitable, with very little water and frequent sandstorms, and yet, Night Vale was still there, a collection of small, dust covered buildings, mostly made from old ships parts, all resting in a small valley. There were just over a thousand people living there, and high death rates caused the population to fluctuate frequently. People rarely went there unless they had nowhere else to go.
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

Night Vale was a tiny colony that rested on the edges of the known universe. The planet it was on was barely hospitable, with very little water and frequent sandstorms, and yet, Night Vale was still there, a collection of small, dust covered buildings, mostly made from old ships parts, all resting in a small valley. There were just over a thousand people living there, and high death rates caused the population to fluctuate frequently. People rarely went there unless they had nowhere else to go. 

Carlos had plenty of other places to go. He was an excellent scientist, and had enough money to study any planet he wanted. But something about Night Vale drew him in, and there were all kinds of strange rumors about it, so when he was hired by a shadowy, intergalactic government agency to study the place, he accepted immediately. He gathered a small team of scientists who were willing to face a little bit of danger in pursuit of knowledge, and left for the colony as soon as possible. 

There was no proper place for ships to land in Night Vale, seeing as people rarely went in or out. Carlos and his team simply landed at an empty area within walking distance of the colony. When they emerged from the ship, there was already a small crowd of people forming, pointing at them and yelling. Carlos stood in front of his team and looked down at the array of dust-covered faces.

“Hello!” he yelled while waving and grinning at the crowd. They all stopped yelling and looked at him. He continued.

“My name is Carlos, I’m a scientist,” he gestured at his team “we’re here to do science,”

The crowd nodded and there was some muttering. Carlos was starting to get nervous from having so many eyes on him. It must have been the entire colony standing in the crowd. He scanned the crowd. His eyes quickly focused on one man near the front of the crowd. He was staring at Carlos with fascination, and had a huge smile across his face. He was wearing a neon purple poncho and......were those cat ears?

“God that’s hot” Carlos thought, before continuing with his speech. 

-

Eventually he and his team went back into the ship to set everything up, and the crowd slowly dispersed. There were no places to stay in Night Vale, so they decided they would just live out of their ship while they were there. Carlos sent Mark, who could be kind of charming, and Nilanjana, who was easily the most responsible out of all of them, to survey the town and maybe interview some people. The two of them got back a bit over an hour later, while Carlos was resting in the kitchen area. Nilanjana slumped into the chair across from him while Mark stayed standing.

“You get anything?” Carlos asked them. They both nodded.

“It seems like most of the people that live here are human,” Nilanjana said, “But there are these...Angels?”

“Angels?” Carlos asked, but neither of them bothered to elaborate.

“And some people said a monster runs the place,” Mark added

“But they could have been making it up!” Nilanjana noted “We didn’t see any monster while we were there,”

Mark made a look that seemed to convey that he did not agree with this, but did not say anything. Carlos was still confused about the previously mentioned Angels. Nilanjana continued. 

“There’s also very strange weather. There’s sandstorms, obviously, but some people said it occasionally rains blood. Oh, and the people. They’re a bit insane. Or maybe more than a bit insane,”

Carlos nodded along as she continued to list more odd things and elaborate on none of them. Mark would pipe up and add things occasionally. It seemed they would have plenty to study while they were there.

-

One important piece of information they had received from their brief survey of town was that most of the people in the town got their news from the radio, and Carlos had remembered seeing an old radio tower, like one of the ones from earth, when they had arrived. The local radio host, Cecil Palmer, was pretty much a celebrity in the small town. So, naturally, the small team had dug through their cargo until they found a small, old fashioned radio, although none of them could remember packing it. They set it on their small dining table and quickly tuned into the only station that was available.

They all leaned forward to listen to it, and heard a man talking about their arrival, the opening of a “park” in town, and how beautiful and perfect Carlos was. Carlos quickly blushed and leaned back from the radio. His whole team was looking at him.

“I, uh, wow,” he said, giggling slightly. There was nothing else to say on the matter.

-

They spent the rest of the day setting up their equipment. Over the next week (or what seemed like a week) they discovered that the planet did not seem to have a consistent day/night cycle. The two suns rose and set at random times throughout the day, and the confused scientists had not discovered any sort of pattern to it yet. They thankfully had yet to experience one of the planet's infamous dust storms. They did not go into the town during this period of time, deciding it would be better to tackle that when they had a better understanding of the planet. 

On the last day of this week, Carlos was collecting rock samples to study with Dave, one of the people on his team. He heard someone approaching from behind him and turned around, expecting to see another one of his scientists, hopefully with some useful information. Instead, he saw the man he remembered from his first day. He was still wearing the neon purple poncho, but the cat ears had been replaced with a floppy hat. He was also wearing striped leggings and platform boots, and had long white hair that was pulled back into a ponytail. He was smiling as he walked towards where the two scientists were standing. When he finally reached them, he held out his hand in front of Carlos.

“Hi, I’m Cecil,” He said, “I was wondering if I could get an interview?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos investigates Night Vale and gets to know Cecil a bit better.

Carlos paused, staring at the hand that was being held out in front of him. Finally, he got his bearings and shook Cecil’s hand.

“Actually I was wondering if I could maybe ask you some questions, about this place, you know,”

Cecil looked a bit disappointed for a second, but then his smile reappeared on his face.

“Of course,” He said cheerly, “ask away! Anything for science! I think science is pretty neat,”

Carlos nodded and continued “So how often do you get supply shipments? I assume you need them, seeing as this place doesn’t have much food or water naturally,”

“Not very often, maybe once a month at most. I mean there’s a lot of fighting in the Blood-Space war taking place in this sector, so they usually have to get through there,” Cecil answered glumly, “But ships crash around here fairly often, so we sometimes take stuff from those,”

Ah, of course, the Blood-Space war. It had been raging for years across most of the known universe. The little planet Night Vale was on unfortunately had a lot of fighting going on between it and the nearest populated planet. Carlos and his team had been lucky, and had traveled through there at a time when there was no fighting. Carlos felt a surge of sympathy for the people living in Night Vale, especially Cecil.

“Wow, you know a lot about these things,” Carlos said. Cecil Blushed.

“Yep, lived here my whole life! You got any more questions?”

Carlos paused for another second, thinking. There was a lot of stuff he needed to learn more about and he had no idea where to start. He decided to go with some of the earliest things he discovered, from Nilanjana’s report on their first day.

“So one person on my team said she saw an alien species she couldn’t identify in the area. She described them as ‘angels’. Do you-” But before he could finish Cecil made a squeaking noise, covered his mouth with his hands, and started vigorously shaking his head. 

“Is something wrong?” Carlos asked

“You’re not supposed to talk about them,” Cecil then mouths the word ‘Angels’ “aren't real. The council said so,”

Carlos was about to ask more questions, but before he could. Cecil looked at his wrist, as if checking the time. He did not have an actual watch, but he did have one crudely drawn onto his wrist. 

“I need to get going, I have a family dinner in a bit. I would love to answer more of your questions, though. Feel free to visit the station anytime you like. Someone smart like you should be able to find it easily,” Cecil chirped, before skipping away, back in the direction of the colony. 

Carlos was left standing there, more confused than he was before the conversation. But, he still felt pretty good about it. Maybe he would take up Cecil’s offer to visit the station. Maybe he should just interact with the residents of Night Vale more in general. While thinking this, he noticed Dave had finished collecting rock samples, which he had completely forgotten as soon as he had seen Cecil. The two of them head back to their ship together, with Carlos feeling better than ever about his research.

-

The two suns go down about an hour after they get back to the ship, and the whole team decided to get some rest while it was dark. When Carlos awoke several hours later, he put everybody else in charge of analyzing the rock samples, then headed towards the colony, hoping to find the station. He needed to talk to Cecil. For scientific reasons, of course. Nothing personal. As soon as he arrived in the colony, anyone he saw would point at him and yell “INTERLOPER”. He remembered Nilanjana and Mark mentioning that that had happened to them, too. He assumed it was probably normal, and decided not to be bothered by it.

The buildings in Night Vale were all made mostly of metal. Carlos kept getting distracted by them. He remembered Cecil mentioning that ships crashed here often, but could not recall seeing many wreckages, so he assumed most of them had been used for building. The buildings looked like patchwork, different types of metal from different sources. Some of them still showed logos from the ships they had been a part of. There were one or two buildings made out of stone. All of them looked pretty sturdy. 

“The people here must be pretty inventive,” Carlos thought “They would have to be living in a place like this,”

He turned away from one of the larger buildings, which was made entirely of stone except for the door and several decorations made of metal scraps hung up around it, to see a figure standing several feet away from him. It loomed above him, glowing black light, and was difficult to look at. Its exact shape seemed to change when he looked away from it and back again. He quickly assumed this was one of the alien lifeforms Nilanjana has mentioned, as well as a source of many of his questions. He tentatively raised one of his hands and waved at it. A person standing near him gave him a weird look. The entity slowly raised what looked like a hand and waved back, then disappeared in a flash, leaving Carlos stunned and somehow more confused than he had been before.

-

He did recognize the station as soon as he saw it, mostly because it had a sign propped out front that had “Night Vale community radio” written on it with a smiley face drawn underneath it. The door was missing a hinge, and swung open easily when Carlos pushed on it. The inside of the station was rather dim, with only a few plain white lights. The air was stale and dry. The floor was linoleum, and covered with a thin layer of sand. It was quiet, and Carlos couldn’t see anyone, so he slowly walked in and closed the door behind him. There was a dull buzzing noise, barely there. Carlos chose to think it was coming from the lights. There were a few other doors in the building, and from one, Carlos could hear the sound of Cecil’s voice, though he could not tell what he was saying. He decided to wait for him to finish his work, and talk to him afterwards.

It only took about twenty minutes for Cecil to finish up. He walked out of the room, and his face lights up when he sees Carlos.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were here!” He bubbled “You could’ve just knocked on the door. I would have been glad to have you on my show,”

“I don’t want to be on your show,” Carlos said, maybe a bit more harshly than intended. There was an awkward silence. The dull buzzing continued in the background.

“So are you just here alone all day?” Carlos finally piped up in order to break the silence.

“I mean, kind of. There’s station management, but they mostly stay in there,” Cecil pointed at one of the doors that he didn’t come out of, “and there’s the station cat, obviously. Oh, and Dana helps around sometimes, too. She’s real nice, I should introduce you two sometime,”

“It’s funny you say that. I was actually wondering if you could give me a tour of the town,”

Carlos didn’t think Cecil could look any happier, but as soon as he made that offer, a huge grin spread across Cecil’s face and he nodded vigorously.

“Of course, it would be an honor,” he walked towards the door and gestured for Carlos to follow him, and together, the two of them walked back outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to continue this because I wasn't too happy with the first chapter and thought I could do better with a second chapter. I also have a bit of an idea of what I'm gonna do for the plot. The next chapter will probably just be more world-building stuff and introducing more of the characters.  
> Comments and kudos are appreciated :)

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this in the future if I actually get an idea for a plot and have inspiration to do more worldbuilding. If anybody has ideas for this fic, or just for WtNV fics in general you might want me to write, I would love to hear them :)


End file.
